


Come Away To The Water

by BombshellKell



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hive Mind, Kaiju!Newt (sort of), M/M, Mind Control, Possession, Self-Harm (under the influence of another)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BombshellKell/pseuds/BombshellKell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kaiju War is over, there are no Jaegers left, the mourning period has passed... but the hive mind lingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Away To The Water

**Author's Note:**

> I worked harder on this fic than I've ever worked on a fic in any fandom before. That being said, I'm largely right-brained, more into the 'fiction' part of science fiction, and therefore parts of this fic are majorly hypothetical, even a bit of a stretch, after taking artistic license. Please read with an open mind, because I still see it as a success.

You wake up in a stranger’s body. 

It is sprawled in a bed, and you can smell its mild sweat and the scent of whatever it uses to clean its hair. When you sit up, you realize you are in some sort of sleeping room. Strange images printed on large sheets of paper line the walls, and miniature representations of creatures and things sit up on the shelves.

You get out of bed and stand on uneasy feet. You are so used to having more legs than this, it feels odd to stand on only two. You stumble a bit as you walk to the stranger’s washing room, looking at yourself in its mirror. The shelves surrounding the mirror are littered with bottles, bottles of medication and cleaning solutions, some of them empty and simply waiting to be thrown away. When you study your reflection, it is centered more toward the bottom of the mirror than you expected. The stranger’s hair is messy and brown, a dull, unassuming color. 

Its eyes are green, but they shouldn’t be. You blink a few times, and the green overflows into a bright, glowing blue, a perfect ring around the stranger’s iris. Now you are fully occupying the body. You smile. 

You practice walking some more, but stumble, falling down onto the bathroom floor and hitting the stranger’s forehead hard against the door frame. Pain roars through the stranger’s head. They were always so sensitive to pain. You get up, looking at yourself in the mirror. The lock had made a scratch on the stranger’s forehead, a nasty looking one that had already begun to breathe. 

You wipe it on the stranger’s sleeve and bring it back into the sleeping room. You stand in front of the stranger’s disheveled bed, closing your eyes, and when you open them again, you know the stranger’s eyes are back to green. As you leave its body, it slumps down onto the floor, missing the bed. 

You haven’t the capacity to care. 

\- - - 

“So anyway, I woke up on the floor this morning with this mean-ass bump on my forehead,” Newt was saying, gingerly poking the scrape a centimeter or so above his eyebrow. Hermann frowned, reaching across their table in the mess hall to brush his fingers over it. 

“It looks terrible, Newton. Are you positive you fell out of bed? It seems to me that would take an awful lot of movement.” 

“Well, yeah, but you know me, I’ve kicked you hard enough a few times before for you to know that I don’t sleep too soundly.” The fact that Hermann didn’t even tell him to keep his voice down made Newt infinitely more cheerful. The whole world could know they were sleeping together, and Hermann wouldn’t even care. Well, maybe he’d care if it was literally the whole world. 

“That isn’t the sort of thing you get from falling out of bed,” Hermann said, but withdrew his hand. “Do I need to come over there and coddle you to make certain you don’t give yourself a concussion?” 

“No, you don’t need to babysit me or anything, I’m just saying I-- wait.” Newt stopped mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing and his lips turning up into a grin. “What did you just say? Did you just invite yourself over in stuffy-talk?” 

“I’ve been over before,” Hermann said stiffly. 

“But only when we... you know, get into it and don’t wanna stop--” 

“Newton!” 

“You’ve never actually asked before!” Newt let out a laugh. “Oh my god, that’s amazing! You actually said you wanna come over to my room and sleep in my bed, in public!” 

“And I’ll never say it again if you keep going on like you are,” Hermann grumbled. “Someone is going to hear you.” 

Tendo, who was walking by with a tray of breakfast, gave them a wink. Hermann turned back to Newt with a glare, but when he did, he wound up being met with a kiss instead. Hermann let his eyes fall closed and just gave up, pulling away when the kiss lasted a few seconds. 

“...I suppose if no one frowned upon Sasha and Aleksis when they... did this...” His chest ached when he mentioned their names, even though it was a few months later. Their absence was felt heavily, from the overwhelming silence in the shatterdome where there once was loud music coming from their docking station, to the lack of Russian accents in the bubbling conversations filling the cafeteria. Chuck, Marshal Pentecost and the triplets were missed similarly, the entire place feeling dull somehow without everyone there. But they didn’t talk about it yet. The way everyone treated the subject, anyone who didn’t know any better would think that they were all on vacation. 

Newt felt the sadness too, but he felt it much more openly. He put his hand on top of Hermann’s and sighed. “There’s kind of a lack of love around here without them, y’know,” he said, looking up at him with earnest eyes. “They’d want us to take their spot.” 

Hermann felt himself smile despite himself. “I suppose when you put it that way...” 

“That’s the spirit.” Newt forced himself to grin, and he squeezed Hermann’s hand. “But yeah, to answer your question, I’d totally love it if you came and babysat me tonight.” 

“It would be an honor to babysit a protege,” Hermann said with a good-natured roll of his eyes. Newt grinned and kept eating, calmer than before, but also much happier. Hermann kept his smile. 

\- - - 

When you wake up the second night, you are not in the same room. This time, another person is sleeping next to the stranger’s body. You ignore it and stand, on the stranger’s unclothed legs, and make your way to this second stranger’s washing room. 

This one is much neater, you note, and with a similar amount of medication in bottles and jars on its shelves. You rummage through the other stranger’s drawers and find a strange weapon, a blade that folds in half. As you open the blade, you cut the stranger’s finger. Pain shoots up the finger and into the hand. How delicate these strangers’ bodies were.

You raise the blade to the stranger’s throat and press down. The flesh bends but does not break. You wonder why, and then you realize that you are using the knife’s dull edge, rather than the sharp one. You scold yourself for your ignorance, and turn the blade over in both hands, this time pressing the sharp edge to the inside of the stranger’s arm. 

The flesh gives way to the knife almost immediately, blood blossoming from the wound and dropping down the stranger’s decorated skin. You wonder if it will damage the pictures on the stranger’s arm permanently, leave a mark. It is hardly your place to care, but you cannot help but hope that you leave some kind of evidence that you were here. 

Worse than the blood is the pain. The stranger’s blood is red; you can hardly tell on its arm, because of all the other images and colors there, but you see the color perfectly when it drips down to the washing room’s blank floor. The first few drops are bright crimson like the stranger’s, but as it continues to drip, you see it slowly darken to the shade of your own blood.

You wonder if you should clean up the mess, but you have no more time to think about it. A voice obstructs your concentration.

\- - - 

“Newton?” Hermann’s eyes widened just as the strange blue color left Newt’s eyes and he collapsed to the floor, his legs buckling beneath him. “Newton.” Hermann let go of the door frame and fell uncomfortably to his knees next to Newt. 

He’d have a few more bruises, Hermann thought, thinking of how hard Newt hit the floor. Was this the same thing that had happened then? How often had it happened before? What was worse was the cut in his arm, deep enough to need stitches and bleeding dark blood, too dark for an ordinary cut in that area. The medics wouldn’t particularly enjoy being rung at this hour, but Hermann hardly had any choice in the matter. 

Newt was regaining consciousness by the time Hermann was getting him back into the bedroom, with difficulty. He gasped, groping at Hermann’s shoulders and sending both of them to the floor again. Newt was looking around wildly, his eyes bright and confused, and he let out a frightened sound when he saw and felt the cut on his arm all at once. 

“H-Hermann. Wha--? What--” 

“Newton, Newton, stop moving.” Hermann managed to get Newt into a sitting position, resigning to stay there since he was hardly strong enough to get Newt back up onto the bed while he was still, let alone while he was thrashing around. He leaned his forehead against Newt’s and took his face in his hands, thumbs stroking his cheeks. “Now, look straight at me. And breathe. This isn’t the time to be panicking, alright?” 

Newt nodded, sweat beading on his face under Hermann’s fingers. “Alright.” 

“Breathe just as I am. That’s right. Nice and slow.” Hermann nodded gently as Newt took a deep breath, steadying the rise and fall of his chest. Eventually, he let out a sharper sigh, leaning his head forward and down against Hermann’s chest. Hermann wrapped both arms around him and held him there until the medics arrived. 

\- - - 

The next day, Newt was still in the infirmary. The medics wanted to drip some saline solution in him through an IV overnight, informing Hermann that he was dehydrated enough for it to be a concern. Neither one of them mentioned the glowing blue eyes. 

“I wish they’d let me outta here,” Newt groaned, looking at the IV with distaste. “They coulda just given me a water bottle or something, instead of this crap.” 

“It isn’t going to kill you,” Hermann said, as he sat heavily in the chair next to Newt’s bed. He even managed to build up enough energy to roll his eyes, despite his worry, and the fact that he’d hardly slept more than an hour or two the night before. 

“No, but just lying here doing nothing might.” 

“Have you told them? Everything?” 

“No,” Newt admitted, fidgeting with his hands and running his fingers up his bandaged arm. “What am I gonna say, though? That I, what, got possessed? And by what?” 

A medic walked past, and both of them fell silent. When she was gone, Hermann spoke up again. “Your eyes were... blue. The same blue as...” 

“Please, don’t say it.” 

“I remember, Newton. I have your memories as well as mine, thanks to the drift. You think of it obsessively. Of course I saw it. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t bother trying. Don’t embarrass the both of us.” 

“So you’re telling me...” Newt looked up from his arm at Hermann, his expression uncharacteristically fatigued as he ran his tongue over his upper lip. “You’re telling me that you think this is the colonists. The guys that sent the kaiju from the other dimension. You think they’re in my head. Possessing me.” 

Hermann sighed, leaning back in the chair. “I don’t know. But I do know that when... when you looked up at me last night... your eyes. I’ve seen those eyes one place before.” 

The drift, Newt thought, but neither of them had to say it. Neither of them wanted to. Because that would mean... "I could be dangerous," Newt whispered. "If they're here in my head, I'm dangerous. I should be locked up. I gotta be put away--"

"No, Newton," Hermann said, reaching over and taking Newt's hand, squeezing it to give him some sort of stability. "We don't know for certain yet what's happening. So until we find out, we aren't going to panic, nor are we going to give Marshal Hansen or anyone else any reason to panic. You're just going to listen to me, and the two of us are going to solve this together." He looked Newt in the eyes, seeing his panic fade down from flames to embers. "Together."

“Together,” Newt repeated, the word echoing inside his thoughts. For once, he didn’t feel like arguing. He curled his fingers around Hermann’s and said quietly, “Alright. Okay. One condition, though.” 

“And what is that?” 

Newt’s voice rose back to its usual volume and pitch. “You get me the hell out of here, cause I’m gonna go nuts if I have to sit here and think about all this all night. Plus, if we don’t want anybody to panic, we don’t want me to have another Paranormal Activity moment in here where there are people besides you. Right?” 

“Point taken.” Hermann glanced toward the group of medics standing and chatting around the supply cabinet. “I’ll do my best to persuade them to release you. Somehow. It shouldn’t be terribly hard; I believe they’d planned on releasing you today, anyway.” 

“Uh. I dunno.” Newt looked away from him. “I had to make up a story for what happened, so I sorta told them I was sleepwalking. They called me, uh...” He lifted up his hand, looking at his medical bracelet. “A violent sleepwalker.” 

Hermann stared dryly at him. “Brilliant. You couldn’t have possibly just said you didn’t remember, and let me handle it. You had to make up a story that ended in violent sleepwalking. The thing that they would perhaps be least likely to release you overnight for.” 

“I didn’t know what kind of dumb story you were gonna make up, so I thought at least I could think of something probable...” 

“Probable!?” Hermann took a deep breath in through his nose. “...Alright. I will try, as usual, to clean up your mess. But, also as usual, I make no guarantees.” 

“Oh, gimme a break!” Newt yelled after him as Hermann stood and started toward the group of medics. “I should at least get creativity points!” 

\- - - 

Of course, there was no possible way the medics would let Newt out that day based on his story alone, so at the end of the day, Hermann returned to his room alone. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the bathroom door, open halfway now after he’d dragged Newt onto the wood floor of the bedroom from the bathroom’s tile. He remembered waking up, blearily hearing uncomfortable groans and grunts that sounded instinctive, like Newt hadn’t even known he was making them. 

When he’d raised his head the bathroom door was wide open and Newt was standing still, staring into the mirror with the straight razor Hermann used to cut his hair in one hand, the dull side pressed to his neck. At that point, Hermann had assumed Newt was just being silly and had gotten out of bed, limping over to the bathroom and leaning against the door frame just as Newt had pressed the sharp edge of the blade into his arm, making Hermann’s eyes widen as blood dripped from the arm to the floor. 

All of these memories were clear, not bits and pieces like in the drift, but a film that Hermann could reply any time he wanted, or even when he didn’t want it. Now, when he looked into the room, sweeping his eyes from the mirror to the sink, he could almost see Newt’s outline standing there, the noises he was making. On the floor, he realized that in their haste no one had bothered to clean the smears of blood on the tile. 

Sighing, Hermann took his cane and went to nudge open the bathroom door all the way. Cleaning had been the last thing on his mind when he’d followed the medics to the infirmary with Newt; of course the blood was still there. There wasn’t much of it, not nearly as much as his memories would lead him to believe; just a few dried droplets and a smear from Newt’s movement on the floor. Hermann leaned his cane up against the doorframe and wet a bit of paper towel, gingerly getting down onto both knees and holding onto the rim of the sink as he did. He let his eyes follow the thin path the blood had made when Newt had collapsed, but as it got closer to the base of the sink, it seemed to get darker, more solid. 

Hermann frowned, and reached behind him to grab his cane and use it to push the light switch up from his position on the floor. He immediately wished he hadn’t. 

The blood under the sink wasn’t red, but a deep, mottled purple, and still wet, even though it had spilled the night before, more than twenty hours ago. Hermann dropped his cane, barely hearing it clatter to the floor, and reached a hand out to touch the dark liquid. When he retracted his arm from the shadows, he saw it wasn’t truly purple, but an indigo, halfway between blue and purple. 

But, undeniably, it was closer to blue than red. 

Hermann hurriedly wiped his fingers off on his shirt, taking a deep, shaky breath. He already felt as if he was holding onto Newt for dear life. Like he was watching him disappear. 

\- - - 

Newt never thought he would be so glad to be in the lab with Hermann again. When the medics had finally let him go (with some strong sleeping medication and a stern warning), Newt made the lab his first destination, even though he was wearing the same shorts and t-shirt that Hermann and the medics had thrown on him after he’d had his little episode, and Hermann was already there, halfway up his ladder and scratching away at one of the lower layers of his chalkboard.

“What’s all that for?” Newt asked, walking over to his side of the room and dumping himself into his desk chair. Hermann jumped a bit, as if he hadn’t seen or heard Newt come in, but recovered effortlessly.

“We’re going to drift again,” he said, polishing off the diagram he was drawing and stepping down from the ladder. Newt got a good look at the chalkboard as a whole now that Hermann wasn’t standing in front of it and pursed his lips. It was a hastily-drawn model of a neural bridge, much like the one he’d constructed from the little bits of equipment he’d managed to scuff up before he’d drifted with the kaiju brain. Hermann’s, of course, was much neater and more ideal, but it was the same concept. 

“Why would we do that?” Newt asked, swiveling his chair around in a circle, trying not to sound as opposed to the idea as he really was.

“Before we can solve this, we both have to be on the same page,” Hermann said. “This will make things much easier.” 

“And why can’t I just tell you everything? Everything I saw, what happened. The stuff I remember. Same diff, right?” He knew it wasn’t, but it was worth a try. 

“Don’t be daft, Newton,” Hermann said flatly. “You may be able to tell me what you remember, but through the drift I’ll get more than words. I’ll get images, feelings. Things that will help us more than your jumbled words. And they are jumbled,” he added, seeing Newt open his mouth in protest. “Even if through no fault of your own. There’s also the fact that we’ll be able to get some proper equipment this time, and not your thrown-together rubbish. Now, are you going to agree to this, or not?” 

“Just hold on a sec, Hermann, alright?” Newt sighed, running his hands over his face. “I gotta think about it.” 

“You were more than willing to drift with a kaiju with me. What’s so different about drifting alone?” Hermann asked coldly, and Newt could see it edging on being taken personally. 

“It’s not that, it’s not that.” Newt waved a hand dismissively. 

“Then for God’s sake, what is it? Why are you so reluctant now? This is our best chance of--” 

“I don’t know if I want you to see all that, alright? And I really don’t wanna see it again. I hardly remember it and I really wanna keep it that way. Are you happy? Sometimes I’m not so gung-ho, sometimes I’m a little more pathetic, nobody can be this awesome all the time.” He leaned back in the chair, letting his head roll back and his arms dangle from the rests. 

Hermann took a moment to reply, a moment so long and tense that Newt raised his head again. When he did, expecting to see Hermann looking at him with disdain or irritation, he didn’t see anything in Hermann’s face other than anxiety, with perhaps a hint of surprise. 

Newt sat up straight in the chair, running his tongue over his lips. “I’ll do it,” he said, standing up and walking over to Hermann, resting his hands on his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it. I’ll be okay. Let’s do it. I agree.” 

He smiled a little, and Hermann even let him kiss him. Newt didn’t want to remember everything that had happened the night before, but he did want to drift with Hermann again, now that the world wasn’t ending. And, of course, he did want to fix whatever was wrong with him. He just wished he could do it without thinking too much about it. “So what’s the plan, man?” he asked, breaking them from their awkward moment and going to sit on Hermann’s desk, swinging his legs. 

“Get off of there,” Hermann ordered, and Newt knew that all of the tension was gone as quickly as it had come. “The plan, as it currently stands, is for the two of us to create another neural bridge.” 

“Another? It’s not like you helped with the first one.” 

“A proper one,” Hermann continued seamlessly. “And drift so that the two of us are once again equipped with the same information. That is the plan.”

Newt nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. Y’know, for a plan coming from you.” He leaned out of the way of a backhanded smack from Hermann and laughed, hopping back down onto the floor. “So, first step. Neural bridge.” 

They worked late into the afternoon, and it was nearing four o’clock when either of them even thought about eating. Since Newt was still in his underwear, technically, Hermann was the one who went to get some food for them this time, coming back with two hastily-put-together bags of what would probably be both their lunch and dinner. He dropped one on Newt’s desk, in the small space that wasn’t currently occupied by broken-up equipment. “How goes it?” 

“I think we’re gonna be just fine. I’m actually using some of the extra equipment from Striker’s docking station in the dome, so. Chuck’s still kinda helping us out, in a way. I tried to go for Cherno’s, but their stuff is way older so it’s kinda hard to find stuff that all fits together. Either way, these are made from Herc and Chuck’s spare extra helmets and parts of their suits.” He showed Hermann the half-dissected helmets, which he was in the process of deconstructing to their bare minimums, more like the excessively-simple squid caps they’d use to drift with the kaiju. 

“Couldn’t you have asked for new equipment?” Hermann asked, sitting on the other side of the desk. 

“Well, yeah, but they’d just have given me basically the same stuff, just already taken apart. And what’s the fun in that?” He looked up at Hermann with a grin. 

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Of course. Because efficiency and time management couldn’t possibly be fun whatsoever. How can I help?” he asked, shifting in the desk chair, hardly even thinking about the fact that he’d just brought them food that neither of them were planning to eat. If it kept people like Mako from barging into the lab to check on them, then wasting food was forgivable. 

“Start on the other helmet. You see what I did here, how I took off the plating on the outside? Just basically take off all the parts that make it look cool and get down to the basics.” He tossed Hermann a screwdriver from the other side of the desk. “Let’s get going!” 

\- - - 

This time when you wake up, you are in an even stranger place. It appears to be some sort of work room, and the stranger had fallen asleep on a pile of electrical equipment. 

You sit up straight in the uncomfortable chair and stretch the stranger’s cramped back muscles. On the other side of the room, you hear a scratching sound. When you turn to look, you realize that the other stranger, the one who had been lying beside this one in bed, is now awake, and writing things in the strangers’ language on a giant, greenish-black writing board. When it hears you move, it speaks but doesn’t turn around. 

“I didn’t bother waking you since you haven’t been getting any restful sleep as of late.” 

It takes you a moment to understand it, because it isn’t speaking English as the rest of the strangers seem to, but you gather that it’s concerned for the stranger when you sort out what it’s saying in your mind. You don’t say anything in reply, as you’re scrambling to remember how to say what you’d like to in the strangers’ language. You stand, facing the other stranger and his writing board fully.

" _Es gibt keine Hoffnung_."

The other stranger turns, expression full of confusion and dread. “...What did you say?” 

" _Es gibt keine Hoffnung_ ,” you repeat, and abandon the stranger’s body, letting it fall to the floor again. 

\- - - 

“There is no hope.” 

When Newt wakes up, he’s on the floor, and he can hear Hermann’s voice, whispering to someone. He opens his eyes with some difficulty, and the blurred image of Marshal Hansen and Tendo talking with Hermann near the door, and Hermann’s still whispering even though for all he knows Newt is still unconscious. 

“That’s all he said. In German. His eyes... his eyes were glowing, blue. He looked right past me.” 

“How long has this been going on?” Herc asked, crossing his arms. Tendo was fiddling nervously with the clip of one suspender. 

“Last night was the first I saw of it. He woke up, wandered over to the bathroom, and had those same strange eyes. Then he just fell, like dead weight, onto the floor. As he is now.” 

Newt somehow found it in him to smile at Hermann being so open about the fact that they’d slept in the same room. No one saw that smile, however, so wrapped up in talking about him that none of them bothered to look at him. It was more than a little annoying, but the migraine starting to form in Newt’s head prevented him from caring too much. 

“And you weren’t going to tell us?” 

“I thought perhaps it could be a side-effect from the drift, that it would leave eventually, but this is the first time he’s ever spoken whilst under one of these spells.” Hermann finally looked past Herc and back at Newt, seeing that his eyes were open. “Newton.” He left the other two and returned to Newt’s side, using his cane to lower himself to the floor next to him. “How do you feel? Can you hear me?” 

“Yeah, unfortunately,” Newt groaned, draping an arm over his eyes. “Don’t talk so loud. What happened?” 

Hermann pressed his lips together, as if debating how much he should tell Newt. Well, the joke was on him, Newt thought, since he’d heard everything already. They couldn’t keep stuff from him. “You... you’d fallen asleep on your desk. I didn’t want to wake you, so I kept working, and when I was finished with the helmet, I finished the neural bridge. After that, I went back to the chalkboards to do some different work until you woke. I heard you stand up and thought you’d be angry that I didn’t wake you, so I told you I didn’t do so because you haven’t been getting enough sleep.” He averted his eyes. “Then I heard you say something, but the voice... was nothing like yours. It was strange, as if it was layered with some sort of static, and echoing. It sounded like you were speaking to me through a communicator while a thousand miles away and at the bottom of a cave.” 

“Great imagery.” 

“You said, ‘ _Es gibt keine Hoffnung_ ’.” Hermann looked Newt in the eyes again. “You said it twice, once again after I asked what you’d said. For a moment I thought, I’d hoped, you might be joking. But when you weren’t...” 

Newt felt about as creeped out as Hermann looked. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest as Herc and Tendo came over to join them. Tendo offered him a sympathetic smile. 

“How you doing, buddy?” 

“I’ve been a lot better, but thanks.” Newt sighed. “What are we gonna do? Even drifting now, it’s not gonna do much. Every time I go to sleep it gets worse, whatever it is takes over more and more, and now? Now it’s telling us there’s no hope. It’s trying to scare us, and it’s kinda working. We gotta find a different way to handle this, something else to do, but this has never happened before. I might end up being the example rather than the success story--” 

“Newton, Newton.” Hermann put a hand on his shoulder, calming his rising panic. “As I’ve told you, we’re going to solve this, and we’re going to solve it soon. I’m going to drift with you. If one of these precursors, these colonists, are in your head, I’ll be able to see them as well when we drift.” 

“They could sneak into your head, too!” Newt pointed out, his eyes going wide. “You don’t wanna do that, Hermann. I’m not gonna kick you in front of the bus!” 

“I’m stepping in front of the bus of my own free will,” Hermann said firmly. “The bridge is finished. It’s time for us to use it.” 

\- - - 

“You guys sure you wanna do this?” Tendo asked, making sure both helmets were secure on their heads. The equipment might have been better, but without a Jaeger the process was going to be about the same. Tendo stood at the Pons processor, ready to throw the switch. Newt didn’t say it, but he was somewhat grateful for the extra help, especially now, when he was feeling so freaked and jumpy. 

“We’re certain,” Hermann said, speaking for them both. Herc, Raleigh, and Mako were all in the room, too, standing around where Newt and Hermann were sitting. Mako’s hands were clasped in front of her and Raleigh had his arms crossed. Herc was simply studying Newt carefully. 

“Alright. So since there’s no kaiju brain or Jaeger to connect you guys to, this would ordinarily be a little quicker, but since there’s somebody else in Newt’s noggin, I’m not too sure.” Tendo leaned over the table, his hand on the switch. “So... let’s just get going and see how it works.” He looked back up at Hermann and Newt. “Neural handshaking in three... two...” 

Hermann looked over at Newt, wrapping a hand around his wrist. Something steady, but not overly affectionate. 

“...One,” Tendo said, and threw the switch. 

Hermann shut his eyes tight. Newt gasped. They were in Hermann’s mother’s kitchen at Christmas, sitting on a barstool and watching her make fruit cake while his brothers and sister ran around the house and laughed. Then they were in Newt’s uncle’s basement, watching him deconstruct an amplifier, his voice echoing as he explained how it worked. They went to a doctor’s office where Hermann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, then another doctor’s office where Newt was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. 

Then, before either of them realized what happened, Newt started desperately chasing the RABIT. With a rush that felt like being in a rapidly-landing plane, they were both standing in Hermann’s bathroom in the middle of the night. Newt was naked, standing still and staring at himself in the mirror. His eyes were sharp and glowing blue as he looked down at Hermann’s straight razor, pressing it to his arm. When he pressed down, his arm gushed a pure navy blue, the memory altered by Newt’s panic and paranoia. 

“Newton.” Hermann reached a hand out and grabbed his arm. Newt turned, his expression empty but for a dull, possessed rage. 

“There is no hope,” he said flatly, his voice the same sort of layered and scratchy terror that it had been the evening before. “There is no hope.” 

“Newton, listen to me. Come back to me.” Hermann took Newt’s face in his hands, but Newt just continued to stare at him dully. 

" _Es gibt keine Hoffnung,_ " he said.

“Newt, what is happening!?” 

They left the memory as quickly as they’d come into it, into a mangled sort of room that looked like a messy network of glowing veins and blue strings, some of them visibly sparking and electrified. Despite the room’s abstract appearance, it very clearly had four walls, but was noticeably missing a door. Most of the room was taken up by a dark figure, a half-humanoid creature that walked on too many legs and saw with too many eyes. It was playing the strings like some sort of instrument, plucking them and watching the light leave them as it did. In a corner of the room, Hermann realized as he turned to look around, was Newt, cowering and covered in the strings like a spider’s prey, his head clutched in his hands. Hermann ran to him, uninhibited by his weak legs in the drift, and fell to his knees in front of him.

“Newt, can you hear me? What memory is this? Where are we?” Newt didn’t say anything, only shook his head and let out a whimper. His fingers curled tighter in his hair, his eyes squeezed shut tight. Hermann grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Newt, say something!” 

Newt looked up at him, his eyes their normal shade of green, and smiled, weakly and a bit vacantly. “...You called me Newt.” 

Behind Hermann, the creature turned, hearing Newt’s voice and realizing he was awake. It pushed Hermann aside, sending a sharp pain striking through his head, and Newt cowered further into the corner, his hands moving down to cover his ears. Once seeing that Newt was sufficiently frightened and subdued, the creature went back to the strings and began once again to pluck them, blue sparks flying into the air as it did. Hermann realized with horror that they were in a crude representation of Newt’s mind, more than likely a representation that Newt had created himself. The creature was playing his thoughts like the strings of a giant instrument, and forcing Newt to be confined to a corner, only a corner, of his own mind when it took over, keeping him there with fear and threats. 

Tendo’s voice broke into Hermann’s consciousness like a knife. “Hermann, snap out of it! It’s Newt, he--” 

Hermann rushed back to reality with a gasp, his head pounding and the world unsteady around him. In the chair next to him, Newt was convulsing, his eyes rolled back and the helmet halfway slid off of the back of his head. Herc grabbed it and pulled it the rest of the way off as Mako and Tendo switched off the Pons and Raleigh ran for a medic. Newt’s seizing settled once the helmet was off, and he lay slumped back in the chair, his chest rising and falling unevenly. 

“What happened?” Mako asked, snapping her head up to look at Hermann with her hair in her face. 

“It’s, it’s....” Hermann took a deep, shaking breath. “It isn’t taking him over, exactly, it isn’t replacing him, it’s sort of p-pushing him aside. It isn’t a kaiju, it’s a master.” He looked up at Herc and Tendo. “They didn’t succeed in clearing the planet with the kaiju so they’re using Newt as a sort of ambassador, an unwilling ambassador. I don’t know what they want with him or what they expect him to do, but they see him as a tool. They’re using him as an instrument, pulling the right strings to produce the effect they want. They chose him instead of me because he seems to have the strings they need.” 

Mako didn’t understand, and Hermann could see it in her face, but she nodded anyway. Hermann could hardly blame her; he wasn’t sure he understood himself. Herc voiced what everyone was thinking. “Why do they need an ambassador?” he asked, crossing his arms. 

“I don’t know,” Hermann said, moving the wheels on his chair closer to Newt’s and checking his pulse, feeling his forehead as well. “Burning up, of course. We’ve got to get him to the infirmary.” 

“Raleigh should be coming back with the medics any minute,” Mako said, looking toward the door. She let out an anxious breath, casting her eyes back down at Newt. “...Do you think that he’ll be alright?” 

Hermann took a moment to answer her. He didn’t want to lie, because of course she would see right through him. But at the same time, this was Newt, and when something was wrong with Newt, now everyone looked to Hermann for answers since it was apparent that they were together. He didn’t want to seem as if he didn’t have faith. 

“...I hope so,” he settled on, giving her a forced smile. She smiled back at him and put a hand on his arm, a sort of wordless comfort that he quite needed at that moment. “I truly hope so, Mako.” 

“We’ll do our best to figure this out,” Herc said with a nod. “The two of you won’t have to do it on your own. The rest of us may not understand what’s happening as well as you do, but if you tell us what to do, I’m sure we can make ourselves useful.” 

“Thank you,” Hermann said to him, grateful for the help but also reluctant to get them involved. Half, admittedly, because this wasn’t their area of expertise, whereas it very much was his and Newt’s, but also because if something were to go wrong, if it were to get more dangerous, Hermann wasn’t sure if he could handle losing more friends. 

He didn’t have a very long time to think it over, however, for as soon as they started talking again, Raleigh came back with the medics and a stretcher, and with Herc and Tendo’s help they got Newt laid out on it. “Take good care of him,” Hermann said wearily. “I’ll be there in a moment. I’m going to fetch him another change of clothes in case he’ll have to stay overnight again. And some entertainment.”

While everyone followed Newt to the infirmary, Hermann took his time and went back to Newt’s room, opening the unlocked door. Once he was inside, he shut it behind him and wrinkled his nose at how messy the room was. How Newt, or anyone for that matter, could live like this was beyond him. There were empty crisp bags and soda cans littering the desk and bedside table (and some that had tumbled to the floor as well), DVD cases and books and scribbled-in notebooks in stacks on every available surface. Newt had a surprisingly extensive collection of music, in most formats, a shelf full of CDs as well as cassette tapes and records. On the corner of his desk was a battered-looking record player that Hermann had seen in Newt’s uncle’s basement in the drift. When he leaned over it to look at the label on the vinyl, he saw that it was Led Zeppelin. Hermann didn’t quite think he’d ever heard a Led Zeppelin song. 

It took him a while to find any sort of method of transportation for the clothes and books, but eventually Hermann found a crumpled Godzilla tote bag half-buried under the bed. He pulled a t-shirt that smelled clean out of one of Newt’s drawers and a pair of black jeans from a shelf in his closet, folding them and sliding them into the bag. Then he ran his fingers along a stack of books on Newt’s desk that looked as if he was currently interested in them, taking three with bookmarks sticking out of them and slipping them in with the clothes. 

He was about to leave, having gotten what he came for, when he turned and saw something white sticking out from underneath Newt’s pillow. He put the tote bag down and pulled it out, frowning. It was a notebook, covered in scribbled numbers and letters that filled the page from each line all the way to the margins, but they weren’t equations. Hermann held the notebook up closer to his face, his eyes widening. 

The page was covered in coordinates. 

In the little spaces between each set were tiny words, in Newt’s messy handwriting. Names of the places the coordinates were for, names of people, presumably people who lived in the coordinates. Hermann’s name was there, as well as Marshal Hansen’s, Mako’s, Raleigh’s and Tendo’s, their hometowns written off to the side. The Hong Kong Shatterdome’s general coordinates were there, and the coordinates for the original location of the breach. Next to those was a scratched out line, and rewritten above it was ‘not again’. 

Hermann felt a chill travel up his spine, and he ripped the page out of the notebook, crumpling it up and shoving it in his pocket. 

When he got to the infirmary, only Tendo was left sitting with Newt, who was still unconscious. Hermann put the tote bag of Newt’s things on the floor next to the bed before sitting in the chair opposite of Tendo, reaching onto the white sheets and taking Newt’s hand, listening to the heart monitor beeping.

Tendo smiled slightly, looking up at Hermann as he put the bag down. “You ventured into his room, eh?” 

“Well, I thought it was the least I could do,” Hermann sighed, leaning back in the chair and setting his cane against the arm of it. “Considering drifting again was my idea.”

“Hey, don’t start talkin’ like it’s your fault,” Tendo said, shaking his head. “It got us somewhere, didn’t it? We know how they’re in his head, that’s the first step to getting ‘em out.” He flashed Hermann a smile. “Hey, remember, we saved the world once, brother. We can do it again.” 

Hermann had heard Tendo call Raleigh ‘brother’ plenty of times, but never anyone else. He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or not, but it made him smile a bit. His smile disappeared as he reached down into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled sheet of notebook paper, reaching over Newt’s legs to hand it to Tendo. “I found this in his bedroom.”

Tendo took the paper and pulled it out straight again, examining the coordinates. “These are exact coordinates for... everything. This is me and Alison’s house. My father’s house. The dome... the breach.” He looked up at Hermann. “What does ‘not again’ mean, you think?”

“Difficult to say.” Hermann sighed, running a hand over his face. “Assuming the precursors wrote it, I would think it means not to try to open a breach in the same place again.” 

“So they’re looking for a different place to open it?” Tendo’s eyes widened. “And they’re using Newt to figure out a prime real estate location?”

“I don’t know,” Hermann said honestly. “I could think of worse things they could be using him for, but it’s difficult to not imagine that as the worst case scenario.” He looked back down at Newt as Tendo folded the paper back up again, pocketing it. 

“We gotta keep stuff like this away from him. Make it as challenging for them as possible. Uh... maybe you should go through his room and take out some stuff that could help them. Textbooks, stuff like that. He won’t be happy about it, probably, but it’s all we can do for now that’s proactive.” 

Hermann nodded. “...It’s frustrating. That it’s all that we can do.”

Tendo shrugged. “But what else can we do?”

\- - - 

The next time you wake up, you are very confused. You seem to be in a new place yet again, though this one looks like a sleeping room for many people, with beds lined up along the walls like soldiers at attention. Why humans would want to sleep together all in one room is confusing to you. What’s even more confusing is the fact that you seem to be tied down. Even if you were in the stranger’s sleeping room, you would not have access to the coordinates you’d written down earlier. 

The stranger’s companion is asleep in the chair next to the bed you are tied to. You wonder why this other stranger is so constantly in your stranger’s companionship. Perhaps they are mates, you think, and laugh. Mating is frivolous to humans, by the way you have observed it, so if they are mates, there is no guarantee that they will be for long.

The other stranger hears you laugh in the stranger’s voice, and wakes up, its eyes big and worried as it sits straighter in its chair. “Newton?” 

Newton. The name of your stranger, your vessel. You think perhaps you should try to refer to the stranger by its name. You smile as you look at the other stranger. “Newton ist nicht hier,” you tell it in its harsh native tongue. 

The other stranger knows this. You can tell from the way its forehead creases and its lips tighten. “...Speak to me in English,” it says. “You can speak English as well, can’t you?” 

You can. It takes you a moment to readjust, but the next thing you say is in the language the stranger is speaking now. “Yes. I can speak English very well.” You look at the stranger evenly. It does not seem like a choice mate even for humans. It is slender to the point of bony, with brittle brown hair and dull brown eyes. It isn’t wearing particularly colorful or even well-kept clothing and you know from your last encounter with it that it walks with a limp. Why would Newton choose it as a mate? 

“What is your name?” you ask it.

“Hermann Gottlieb,” it replies, and you think you can see its desirable qualities through that answer alone. Its voice does not tremble, nor does it sound hesitant, even though it is speaking to something unknown. It seeks further conversation with you. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you.”

“Then speak,” you say, and smile to be courteous. “I do not have any choice but to listen.” You pull against the restraints on the bed. 

“I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know what you intend to use Newt for. I don’t know what you and the others are planning, and in all honesty, I would rather not know. But please.” Hermann closes his eyes, taking a breath that you can hear rattling in his chest. “Please, stop this. Remove yourself from him. You’re hurting him.” 

“What business is it of yours if we hurt him?” you ask. “It is not you being hurt.” 

“Yes, it is,” he says, nodding. “It is me being hurt. When Newton drifted with your kaiju’s brain for the second time, I was there with him, I was drifting with him. Our kind, humans, we fought you with this technology. The two of us are connected. I feel his pain, and he feels mine.” He pauses, running his hands over his face, and you see the first sign of fear in him when they tremble. “But more than anything, I care about him, more deeply than you can understand. And so even if we weren’t connected, it would hurt me to see you using him in this way.” 

“It is necessary,” you say. “We need your planet.” 

“But why?” Hermann demands. 

“It is perfect for us. The chemicals in your waters, in your air, is ideal for our survival. We can use your waters to grow more of our exterminators, should something like this ever happen again. We can live comfortably on your planet. Therefore we must have it.” 

“What do you intend to do to seize it?” 

“I am already giving you a generous amount of information. I am not giving you any more. You may despair, you may lie awake at night and wonder, you may make yourself sick with dread, but you will never know. You may be able to see Newton’s thoughts, but you will never be able to see mine.” You smile again, with Newton’s lips, stare at Hermann with Newton’s eyes, overtaken with the glow of yours. “There is no hope for you, as I have told you once before.” 

Hermann is shaking his head, desperately trying to convince himself that somehow, you are wrong. “...No,” he said. “If there is one thing I’ve learned from the man you’re using as your puppet, it’s that there is always hope. Even if you have to create it yourself.” 

“You may believe what you will. Your story will end the same way.” You lay your head back, close Newton’s eyes. “I am going to let Newton reclaim control now. He will more than likely wake now.” 

“Wait--” Hermann stands from the chair, but you are already gone.

\- - - 

“Ugh, you know when I wake up in a hospital bed, the sound of you yelling really isn’t the first thing I wanna hear.” Newt turned his head, making to sit up but feeling the restraints and looking down at them with a mix of annoyance and panic. “Hey, what’s the deal here?” 

“You were convulsing quite violently,” Hermann said, immediately making to unbuckle the arm restraints, leaning over Newt’s chest to undo the one on the other side. “And... you were possessed again, I’m afraid.” 

“Oh, great.” Newt hated that this was starting to sound like a normal thing. “So what’d it do to me this time? I don’t feel any fresh injuries.” He looked down at his arms. “And can you get these off my legs, too? I’m not getting euthanized. I hope. Maybe that’d be a good way out.” 

“Very funny.” Hermann went to unbuckle the restraints around Newt’s ankles as well. “It spoke to me this time,” he said softly. “It was coherent.” 

“Coherent?” Newt frowned, his eyes widening as Hermann pulled the restraints off. “So you, like... had a conversation with it?” 

“Yes.”

“How do you know I wasn’t just talking in my sleep?” 

“Newton, I know what you sound like when you talk in your sleep. I did know that it was the precursor..” Quickly, he tried to explain everything he’d heard, about them using Newt, about their desire to take over Earth because of the ideal environment (“Well, we already knew that,” Newt said with a nod. “From the first drift.”), and how it had begun to speak in German before Hermann requested it switch to English.

“It must have access to all of the information in my brain,” Newt said, realization dawning on his face. “How else would it know how to speak both German and English? It can probably speak Klingon, too.”

Hermann stared at him. “The way you can talk about things like speaking Klingon at a time like this continues to astound me.” 

“Humor’s a defense mechanism, buddy,” Newt said with a weak smile. “But why did you make it switch to English? You could understand it either way.” 

“Well, yes, I could.” Hermann reached into the pocket of his cardigan and pulled out a small tape recorder, the red light of which was still glowing vibrantly. “But Marshal Hansen and the others couldn’t. But now they can.” 

Newt’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re surprisingly smart sometimes, Hermann, you know that?” 

“I have multiple Ph.Ds, Newton, I--”

“Yeah, yeah, you work that into every conversation.” Newt rolled his eyes. “I was trying to compliment you. You might wanna take it.”

“You may want to find a less-insulting way to issue it.” 

“Alright, alright. You’re smart.” Newt offered him a smile. “Real smart. Sometimes I forget how smart. Cause you spend so much of your time doing dumb things like arguing with me about whether or not I turned the thermostat up too high or whether my shoes are dirty.” 

Hermann actually laughed, and shook his head. “That’s the most complimentary thing I think I’m ever going to get from you, so I suppose I’ll take it.” 

Newt’s smile widened. “You should totally stay here with me tonight. There’s room for two people in this bed, if we try really hard and believe in ourselves.” 

“Oh. Yes.” Hermann indicated the bag of stuff he’d grabbed from Newt’s room. “I brought you a change of clothes and some reading material, as well. I took the things on your desk that had bookmarks in them. I assume that means you’ve been reading them.” 

“It could mean anything, really.” Newt took the tote bag when Hermann handed it to him, shuffling through the books and comics. “Oh, cool Star Trek novels. And an Iron Man comic, dude! This one’s great. Come on, we gotta read this.” 

“We?” Hermann snorted. “What did you have in mind, that I read it aloud to you like a children’s book?” 

“Uh, no,” Newt said matter-of-factly, scooting over in the bed, toward the side the IV pole was on, until there was room for Hermann’s slim frame to sit up next to him. “You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced Newt Geiszler’s comic book theatre. C’mon. Have a seat.” 

Hermann gave him a skeptical look but, with Newt’s help, sat up on the bed next to him. Newt manually took his arm and put it over his own shoulders, but Hermann was happy enough to play along, propping the comic book up on their knees as he bent one, keeping the weaker leg straight. Newt cleared his throat and started to narrate the comic in a clear, dramatic tone, doing different voices for different characters and a slightly more neutral voice to read the narrative boxes. 

Eventually, Hermann let his head lean over against Newt’s, which was a bad idea considering how terribly bored he was by Newt’s narration. It was clearly an issue smack dab in the middle of an ongoing plotline, and Hermann had no idea what was really happening, even with Newt’s helpful asides. As soon as he let himself lean against Newt, he nodded off, falling asleep on Newt’s shoulder and feeling as if he could finally get some sleep now that Newt was in close vicinity to him. He would be there should he wake up and something was wrong.

As soon as Newt felt that Hermann had become dead weight against his shoulder, he grinned and put down the comic. “Hey, dude,” he murmured, nudging his arm. “Come on, if we’re gonna go to sleep, we gotta lay down. I’m not waking up tomorrow sore from sleeping sitting up.” 

Hermann didn’t completely wake, though he was oddly compliant when he was asleep; he moved easily when Newt shifted him down into a lying position and covered them both with the blankets as best he could, with Hermann being quite a bit taller than he was, feeling like it should have been the other way around, since he was the one originally in the hospital bed. He should have been the one being tucked in. But it was hard to mind, as he lay down next to him, his IV arm resting carefully on Hermann’s side, over the covers so as to avoid it getting lost in them. 

Hermann didn’t wake or mumble or give any sign of being even mildly awake; he must have hardly been getting any sleep at all, Newt thought, thinking what a light sleeper he usually was. A twinge of guilt resonated in Newt’s chest, but he didn’t let it linger for long. This was happening to both of them, after all, and he thought he probably still had it worse off. Not wanting to think about it, he put his glasses on the side table, snuggled closer to Hermann, and managed to fall asleep. 

\- - - 

“ _Es gibt keine Hoffnung._ ”

The sound of the precursor’s voice, warping Newt’s, resonated in Hermann’s dreams. In them, he saw Newt’s face, looking up at him, his eyes slowly flooding from their dark green to glowing blue, rough scales breaking through his skin and leathery black covering his freckles. He grinned at Hermann with jagged and pointed teeth. “There is no hope.”

There was no hope. There was never any hope. They didn’t stop the apocalypse, only postponed it. He never thought these things while he was awake, but in his nightmares there was nothing holding him on the side of optimism, no Newt to shake him by the shoulders and order him to pull himself together. He had always been a pessimist in his dreams. 

But this time, when he woke up, the pessimism didn’t go away. He started awake with a short gasp, panic gripping his chest, even though he knew even as he felt his heart pound that it shouldn’t be him who was panicking. He turned his head to find Newt looking blearily up at him, his arms unraveling from around Hermann’s middle. 

“Wha’s goin’ on?” 

“N-Nothing.” Hermann shook his head, closing his eyes and laying his head back down, taking a deep breath. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Are you having a panic attack?” Newt asked outright, propping himself up with one arm and raising the other one to rub his eyes.

“No, Newton. Go back to sleep.” 

“Oh. You had a bad dream.” Newt frowned, and Hermann was beginning to curse the connection they had, feeling as if he didn’t get a moment of privacy anymore. Newt scooted closer again, one of his legs hooking over Hermann’s under the blankets. “Hey, it’s alright.” 

“No, it isn’t.” Hermann shook his head. “This isn’t happening to me, it’s happening to you. I shouldn’t be the one with the bad dreams. I should be keeping strength enough for both of us.” 

“That’s such bullshit.” Newt groaned. “For once, can we ditch the self-hatred? Listen up.” He reached over and took Hermann’s face in one hand, his thumb tucked underneath his chin. “This is happening to both of us. Everything happens to both of us. We’re a unit now, remember? You’re stuck with me.” He smiled, watching Hermann’s expression spark with irritation. It was better than the sad eyes, at least, thought Newt. “So yeah. I don’t want you to think you can’t have nightmares and be scared and stuff. It’s just me, dude.” He felt his smile losing a few watts, but he told himself he wasn’t going to be the one to cry. “Well... I guess it’s not just me. But when it is me, take advantage of me being here, alright? Yell at me more. Tell me when you’re scared. Roll your eyes at me. I don’t care. I wanna get it while I can.” 

Hermann’s eyes turned fearful, his voice soft. “...What are you saying?” 

“I’m saying that I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna have to get that stuff from you.” Newt felt his own voice crack, and wanted to hit himself. Instead, he swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Neither of us know what’s gonna happen. And if something does happen to me, I want us to be like we usually are when it happens. I want you to remember it like it was. I don’t want you to treat me like somebody you feel sorry for. Remember that we were totally in love and totally drove each other nuts.” 

Now he swore by the look on his face that Hermann was going to start crying, and he definitely didn’t want to see that. “Hey, no crying, though.” He wound his arms around Hermann’s slim frame again, pressing his cheek against his chest, and stretching out in what little space the hospital bed allowed them. “No crying.” 

“It may be too late for that,” Hermann said with a bitter laugh, his chin resting on top of Newt’s head. “...I love you, you know.” 

“I know.” Newt smiled sadly. “I love you, too. Can you do me a favor, though?” 

“What?” 

“Can you just say, like, just once... ‘I love you, Newt’? Not Newton. Just Newt. Like I’ve been telling you to call me for like eight years now.”

Hermann couldn’t help it; he laughed, even with tears streaking down his face. “Oh, all right. I love you, Newt.” 

Newt’s smile widened. “Thanks. I love you too, Doctor Gottlieb.” He closed his eyes, feeling Hermann’s hands slip chastely up the back of his shirt and trace the tattoo lines that he had memorized now. It put Newt to sleep almost instantly. 

\- - - 

The next morning, Newt wasn’t in the hospital bed with him. Hermann woke to the sound of a concerned nurse asking where he was, but he only half heard her, looking down at the empty space next to him. The IV was lying on Newt’s side of the bed, a growing wet spot as well as a few drops of blood underneath it. Hermann’s eyes widened and he scrambled out of bed. “Should have left the bloody restraints on,” he muttered as he grabbed his cane and abruptly left the infirmary. 

“Have you seen Dr. Geiszler?” he asked everyone he was close enough to speak to without shouting. “Dr. Geiszler, have you seen him about at all? Has anyone seen Dr. Geiszler?” 

“Hermann!” came a voice from the head of the hallway. It was Mako, and she was soaking wet and panting, her hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. “Hurry, come with me. It’s Newt. He’s on the beach. I saw him on the news.” 

Outside, it was so stormy and dark that at first Hermann thought for sure he must have slept all day, and it was already well into the evening. The beach was empty when he got out of Mako’s car, aside from the small crowd from the news station, reporting on the bad weather. It was obvious when they started to approach him that Mako had seen him in the background, a small form against the thrashing wind and water, letting himself get soaked as he walked along the waves. He was wearing the spare clothing Hermann had brought for him, but whether he’d put it on or the precursor had put it on for him, Hermann wasn’t sure.

“Newton!” Hermann yelled, as he and Mako drew closer. “What are you doing!?” 

Newt turned to face them, his eyes bright and glowing. But this time, they were different. Before, they were only possessed by the color and light, still taking the same shape that Newt’s eyes usually took, round and unassuming. Now they were deep, as if the glowing was coming from deep inside of him, and cruel. Hermann could see the glow through the rain, and next to him Mako hugged herself. 

“Doctor Geiszler!” she called. “Please, come back with us! We’re very worried!” 

Newt smiled, or rather, the precursor smiled through him, and turned back toward the sea, stretching his arms out wide. “We can see it,” he said, and had it been Newt’s voice alone Hermann wouldn’t have been able to hear it. But the overlay of the precursor’s voice was so high-pitched and loud that it broke through the wind’s roar. “We have seen the heart of our enemies, and we will destroy it.” 

Both Hermann and Mako instinctively whipped their heads back toward the start of the beach. Above it, looming in the sky, was the shadowy shape of the dome, only half-visible in the storm. Hermann felt his worst fears come to reality. They had found the coordinates again. They knew just where to open a new breach. They had done it once before and they were going to do it again. And Newt was their puppet. 

“Newton!” Hermann made his way over to Newt as quickly as he could with the wind and rain, squinting against it and grabbing his shoulder to turn him back around. “Snap out of it! Come back!” 

Newt struck him, the back of his hand hitting Hermann’s face and knocking him to the ground, his cane clattering down next to him. He looked up at Newt in disbelief, seeing the last shred of humanity in him hide away and disappear. He was no longer Newt. Mako ran over and knelt next to Hermann, putting her hands on his shoulders and making sure he was okay, but both of them looked up toward the sea as a great lurching sound made the whole beach vibrate, sand shifting and rocks tumbling. Mako wrapped her arms around Hermann’s torso as they ducked their heads, a huge wave leaping over them and crashing down on top of them, so icy cold that Hermann gasped and clutched at Mako’s arms, feeling her shoulders shivering. 

When they looked back up again, Newt was on his hands and knees, dry-heaving and shaking. He turned his head up to face the sea and started to convulse, falling onto his side as his eyes rolled back up into his head before closing. Hermann crawled over to him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him upright, pulling down a lower lid and seeing the quick-spreading hemorrhaging that stained his eyes with red. The glow was gone. 

“Oh, my god.” Mako was standing again, her eyes wide as she stared past them at the ocean. The ocean was splitting, like a biblical disaster, a deep gash forming in the middle of the water. Hermann shut his eyes tight and hugged Newt to his chest, prepared for something awful to come out of the split. 

But nothing came. 

The two walls of water crashed down again, filling the gash, the storm continuing as it had. Hermann looked up from Newt, his face hardening in confusion. 

Mako voiced his thoughts. “What... why did it stop?” 

Realization hit him like another slap to the face. “...It’s Newton.” He looked back down at Newt, at his unconscious face, the blood streaming from his nose and clouding his eyes. As soon as Newt had fallen unconscious, the precursors had stopped. 

“His mind is their map,” he muttered. Then, looking up at Mako, he repeated it. “His mind is their map. They can only access the information they need when he’s conscious. When he’s unconscious or unresponsive, it’s as if his brain is turned off, like someone is blocking the view of their information. They can’t see the coordinates they need.”

“But he won’t stay unconscious forever,” Mako said, nervously picking at her wet sweater sleeves. “Not unless...” 

“No, no, he doesn’t have to die.” Hermann shook his head, closing his eyes and hugging Newt close again. “...No, I think that I can fix this before then.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Help me get him into the car.” Hermann reached for his cane and used it to pull himself to his feet, as he and Mako supported Newt from either side and walked him back over to the car. 

“What are you going to do?” Mako asked, sliding into the driver’s seat as Hermann closed the passenger side door. 

“The first time I drifted with him while he was under control of the precursors, I saw a sort of representation of what it was doing to his mind,” Hermann said, as Mako sped away from the beach. “His thoughts were sort of represented by strings, like an instrument, and the precursor was plucking them, controlling his thoughts, what he saw and heard and felt. I think that if I could go back to that place, if I could just destroy its presence in his mind, I could destroy their power.” 

“That sounds dangerous,” Mako said, looking over at him after she’d bolted through a yellow light. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do that without getting hurt?” 

“No,” Hermann admitted. “I’m not sure. But it’s the only plan we’ve got. And the only thing that could save Newt. So I’m going to try.” 

\- - - 

“The nosebleed won’t stop,” one of the medics said as they hefted Newt onto a stretcher in the lab. Hermann was at Newt’s desk, hurriedly setting up the Pons with Tendo and praying that Newt wouldn’t wake up before he had a chance to do this. “It usually stops within a few minutes of drifting, but this time it isn’t. He’s losing a lot of blood.” 

“If he survives this, he can get a transfusion,” Hermann said dismissively. “He’s B positive.” 

“He can get the blood from me, then,” Tendo said, as he went over to put the helmet on Newt’s head. “No problem. If you both survive this.” 

“If,” Hermann agreed, setting the helmet down on his own head. “But I think I have a relatively good chance.” 

“Good.” Tendo positioned himself by the switch of the Pons, ready to throw it on Hermann’s indication. “If you can’t give us more than a prediction, it at least better be an optimistic one. Just say when.”

“Now, now, we don’t want to waste any time.” Hermann sat in the desk chair and gripped its arms, closing his eyes tightly. Tendo threw the switch. 

Newt’s mind was so polluted by the precursors that this time, Hermann didn’t get any of his childhood memories as he flew through the drift. He got a few of his own, his father’s scolding echoing in his ears and the sound of his own laughter in an empty room filling him with bitter memories, but all of the visions attached to Newt were the precursors’. Hermann saw another realm, the same realm he’d seen when they’d drifted with the kaiju brain, vast and over-inhabited. He saw Newt’s face looking back at the precursor through Hermann’s bathroom mirror, and then his own face, as the being in Newt’s body had spoken to him in the infirmary. 

Then, with a painful pull, they were in the room again, the room full of strings. The last time Hermann had been here, Newt had been cowering in the corner, but this time, he was lying on the floor there, white-faced and hollow-eyed, staring ahead at nothing. The precursor’s many-legged body was still plucking the strings, but at a faster and more precise rate, playing specific notes rather than exploring the sound they made individually. 

Hermann fell on his knees next to Newt. “Newton. Newton, speak to me. Newt, say something!” 

Newt didn’t make any noise, his eyes unshifting. Hermann didn’t know how the Newt outside of this room was doing, but this Newt was dead. 

“You aren’t bloody well leaving me now,” Hermann growled, standing and turning toward the precursor. “This is your fault.” 

The thing turned its head toward Hermann, cocking it to the side. It was bigger than Hermann, bigger than two or three of him, really, and if he was in his corporeal body, there was no possible way that he could have taken it down. 

But he was in Newt’s mind. He was as strong as Newt saw him, and so he knew that he could win. 

He ran into the cluster of strings, looking for a thought that Newt could stand to lose, but all of them seemed so important he could barely pick one out. All of them were inherently Newt, and even an opinion on tomatoes or a thought about the weather three weeks ago seemed like too much to take. He felt the creature gaining on him, chasing him through the strings, and in a panic Hermann grabbed a string at random, yanking it off the wall and tearing it away from the others. 

By now, the precursor was right behind him, but that was exactly where Hermann needed him to be. He threw himself at it, winding his arms around its neck and pulling himself onto its back with a grunt, the string between his teeth. It thrashed around, trying to throw him off, but Hermann took the string from his mouth and wrapped it around its throat, pulling it tighter and tighter until the thing was croaking and wheezing, its blue blood oozing out onto Hermann’s hands and the string he was choking it with. 

It let out a gravely gasp, struggling for breath, and was soon too weak to try to throw Hermann off. When it fell, Hermann fell with it, onto the room’s white floor, blue blood splattering underneath them. He kept a firm grip on the string, breathing hard as the precursor’s breath thinned and slowed and then stopped altogether. Hermann wasn’t certain how to check for a pulse, but he didn’t feel as if he needed to, for at that moment, he heard a soft coughing behind him. 

Newt was alive, still unconscious and on the floor, but definitely alive. Color was flushing back to his face, the dark circles under his eyes disappearing until he looked like he was only asleep. Hermann dropped the spring and hurried to his side, picking up Newt’s hand and finding it warm, even warmer than his own. He was alright, he was alive, and they were free. 

Laying Newt’s arm back on the floor again, Hermann turned back toward the precursor and its splatters of blue blood, but it was gone. The blood seemed to seep into the floor, disappearing even as Hermann looked at it, and leaving only the string that Hermann had broken off lying on the floor where it used to be. Curious, Hermann wandered back over and picked up the string. He hadn’t even looked at which thought he’d broken off. He hoped it wasn’t anything important. 

Holding it in both hands, he started to look at the tiny text running along its edge, but thought better of it. He didn't want anything to affect his relationship with Newt, especially after what they'd talked about in the infirmary. He wanted to treat him as they always treated each other. Pressing his lips together, Hermann threw the string back on the ground, where it seeped into the floor with the blood. He then reached up and took off the helmet, the room rushing away from him and bringing him back to the k-science laboratory, with Tendo and Herc and Mako and Raleigh. And Newt. 

\- - - 

For once, when Newt woke up, he wasn’t anywhere strange or uncomfortable. He didn’t have anything attached to him, and he didn’t have any sort of headache. He was in Hermann’s bed, in his overly-neat bedroom, wearing a fresh t-shirt and boxers. For all intents and purposes, it felt like he was just waking up after a good night of sleep.

Hermann was lying next to him, already awake. Probably waiting for him to wake up, Newt thought, as he turned onto his side to face him. 

Hermann gave him an irritated look that had no real fire behind it. “It’s about time you woke up. You’ve been occupying the majority of my bed for days now.”

“Days?” Newt closed his eyes with a groan. “Great. All the TV shows I’ve probably missed.” He shook his head, looking back over at Hermann when he opened up his eyes again. “Well? Did we win, at least?” 

Hermann took a moment to answer, running his tongue over his lips and thinking of how best to say it. “I’ll only say that you’ll be getting years and years of eye-rolling and yelling from me. Many more, if I have anything to say about it.” 

Newt grinned. “So my brain’s all mine again?” 

“All yours. I may have a bit of a time share there, but the majority of it is yours, yes.” 

He let out a sigh of relief, reaching down between them and taking Hermann’s hand. “Man. I almost didn’t think we could do it. Almost.” 

“I’m certain the fact that your life, and the world, ended up being in my hands is absolutely terrifying to you.”

“Oh, no way.” Newt scoffed. “If anything, that’s a relief. I don’t think I’d trust anybody else with the safety of my life and the world. I trusted you with it once before, you know.” 

Hermann laughed softly. “I’m sure you want to know all of the details.” 

“Yeah, but I think I wanna stay in bed a little bit first.” He moved in closer, to his favorite place with his head on Hermann’s chest and his arms wrapped around his middle. “If that’s okay with you, Doctor.” 

“I can think of no better way to spend an afternoon.” Hermann closed his eyes, hugging Newt as close to him as he could, with the knowledge that he would never have to risk letting him go again.

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes: 
> 
> 1\. The idea of Newt's mind being in the form of a room, with his thoughts played like the strings of an instrument, unashamedly was inspired by the Disney Channel original movie Pixel Perfect.
> 
> 2\. The fic was based on a fanmix I made long before writing it. You can find it here and listen to it if you want; that would be cool of you: http://8tracks.com/fimbuldraugr/where-i-can-t-follow 
> 
> 2.5. Yes, the titular song is on the mix.
> 
> 3\. For the purposes of this fic, I'm going to say that Newt has imagined his mind as a room full of strings before, maybe even whimsically. Therefore the room would sort of be a memory, and therefore could be chased and stuck in as Hermann is twice in this fic. 
> 
> 4\. The thought-string that Hermann used was probably something along the lines of "Hermann will eventually get tired of me and leave."
> 
> 5\. Thank you so so very much for reading this and I love you.


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